74 BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 
hundred grammes of peat been taken instead of ten for the given 
amounts of water and alkali, it is not impossible that more nitrogenous 
food might have been made available for the plants. 
It is worthy of remark, with regard to the crops that were watered 
with solutions of peat in carbonate of soda, that both of the plants in jar 
No. 4, and one of those in jar No. 3, had the peculiar reddish-brown 
leaves that have been noticed by other observers who have grown plants 
in peat, and often by myself in previous experiments. It should be said, 
furthermore, that, towards the close of the experiments, moulds were 
observed to be growing in the wash-bottles that contained the peat 
liquors, particularly in the one that held the solution of crude peat in 
carbonate of soda. Indeed, the color of that special solution was 
finally changed from the original black to as light a yellow as that of 
the solutions of peat in phosphate of potash. ‘The solution prepared 
with leached peat and carbonate of soda retained its dark color. 
There was nothing to indicate that the growth of this fungus had 
interfered in the least with the conduct of the experiments as above 
described, or that it had exercised any appreciable influence whatsoever 
upon them; but the fact of the growth of the mould is interesting in 
itself, as showing that some of the lower orders of plants can procure 
nitrogen from the alkaline peat liquors or from the products of their 
decomposition. | 
The results of the foregoing experiments go to show that the nitro- 
genous constituents of composts prepared with peat and alkali, which 
are known from practical experience to serve an excellent purpose as 
plant food, are probably preducts of the decomposition of the peat 
through fermentation caused by the alkali,—as was indicated before 
by the experiment of Avgus Smith,* and by the prevailing method of | 
preparing composts, of which fermentation is an essential feature, — 
and that they are not mere educts from the peat held in an alkaline 
solvent. That peat alone, without the addition of an alkali, can supply 
a great deal of nitrogen to crops in soils that are well supplied with 
the other kinds of plant-food, and are favorably situated with respect 
to warmth and moisture, has been sufficiently insisted upon already in 
an article printed on page 202 of the first volume of this Bulletin. 
* Bussey Bulletin, 1. 887. 
EE 
